{"id":120385,"date":"2015-12-13T06:53:40","date_gmt":"2015-12-13T05:53:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/?p=120385"},"modified":"2015-12-13T06:53:40","modified_gmt":"2015-12-13T05:53:40","slug":"the-story-of-creation-understanding-the-bible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/?p=120385","title":{"rendered":"The Story Of Creation: Understanding The Bible"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"L-R:<\/a>

L-R: Imam of Apo Mosque, Sheik Muhammed Khalid, Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, Dirctor-General, National Orientation Agency (NOA), Mr Mike Omeri, Primate of Church of Nigeria Anglican Communion, Rt. Rev. Nicholas Okoh and Executive Secretary, Christian Pilgrims Commission, Mr John-Kennedy Opara, at the NOA\u2019s conversation with religious leaders in Abuja, recently<\/p><\/div>\n

And God said, let us make man in our own image,\u00a0 likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of sea and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.<\/p>\n

Introduction:
\nThe story of the Creation
\nof Man as contained in the Bible, continues to invoke thoughts among both the learned and unlearned in the society, and while some schools of thought accept the story hook line and sinker, others do not. The result of this divide has led to heated arguments, and thought provoking emotional debates from both sides. This is quite understandable due to the different orientations and religious backgrounds of the individuals or groups involved, and the heterogeneous nature of the society; thus bringing about a conflict of \u201cKnowledge\u201d. As a result, various theories have been propounded by intellectuals concerning the creation of Man; foremost
\nof which, is the Theory of Evolution as postulated by Charles Darwin. This theory posits that man has gradually evolved from a unicellular to a multicellular organism by means of natural and sexual selection. The Theory of Evolution, is an attempt
\nto negate the Bible story of the Creation of Man, with emphasis that man was not created, but has undergone a process of evolution, leading to the logical conclusion that man is not a direct creation of God as contained in the Bible. We are therefore confronted with two main viewpoints; the Religious and the Scientific.
\nThe question is, which of these two views is correct; religion or science. It is this dicey situation that has prompted me to offer enlightenment on the subject matter. In truth, both Religion and Science are correct in their different perspectives. This is because while religion explains the creation story from a spiritual perspective, science makes its explanations from a physical
\nperspective. Thus, even though both explanations are correct, they cannot be the same.
\nThe essence of this article is to harmonize the viewpoints of both Religion and Science, using the Laws of Creation as a foundation for all explanations.
\nIn order to achieve our aim, we must first establish the fact that the Bible records Spiritual Happenings, while Science can only draw conclusions from physical occurrences. In other words, the account from the Bible is based on what can be seen with the spiritual eyes, 18
\nWhile religion explains the creation story from a spiritual perspective, science makes its expalanations from a physical perspective.\u00a0 Thus, even though both explanations are correct, they cannot be the same.
\nAll the accounts in the Bible are correct, and there is no contradiction, except in places where humans have supplemented what has been seen spiritually, with their intellectual knowledge. For example, the Bible when speaking about the creation of man, does not refer to man on earth alone, but to all Spiritual Beings, including man. The writers of the Bible, being guided by their intuition – which is\u00a0 limited to time and space – were able to link up with the main power strearr and absorb as much as was possible for them given their maturity and spiritual development. Specific landmarks were given whenever there was a need for it. The domain of Divinity is widely different from the Spiritual.and the Spiritual also different from that of the Physical World of\u00a0 Matter. In the order of hierarchy, Divinity is higher than Spirituality, and Spirituality, is also higher than the Physical World. And all this is duly represented in the story of the Creation of Man. Thus we have in Genesis 1:26-27 the following:
\nAnd God said, let us make Man in our own image, after our likeness: And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea over the fowl of the air, over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created Man in His own image, in the image of God created He\u00a0 him; male and female created He them. \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0From the above reference, we are confronted with the following;
\n1. The Creation of Man was not a unilateral decision by God.
\n2 A wide consultation was made by God with other\u00a0\u00a0persons who are part of His cabinet.
\n3. The form of Man i.e. what he should look like, was \u00a0jointly agreed between God and His cabinet members\u00a0 whoever they may be.
\n4.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Man on earth is a likeness of the image of God.\u00a0 In other words, Man is not an image of \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0God, but only a likeness of those who took after His image.
\n5.\u00a0 From the beginning of Creation, God created Man and Woman together.\u00a0 The implication of this statement is that man was not created before the woman.\u00a0 They were both created male and female at the same time.
\nHowever, the Creation of Man takes a different dimension in Genesis 2:7 which records thus:
\nThen the Lord God took some soil from the ground and formed a man out of it.\u00a0 He breath into his nostrils and the man begin to live.
\nAgain looking at the reference above, the Creation of Man is not similar to the first. This time.
\n1.Man was created alone, without a woman.
\n2.The Lord God had to personally come down to earth to gather the dust of the ground as his raw material for the creation of Man.
\n3.The molded form was not living until God breathed into his nostrils.
\nWe certainly would agree to the fact that these were not the features of what we saw in Genesis1:26-27.
\nNevertheless, a third reference from Genesis 2:18-23 read thus;
\nThe Lord God said, it is not good for Man to live alone, I will give him a suitable companion to help him.\u00a0 Then the Lord God made the man fall into deep sleep, and while he was sleeping, he took out one of his ribs and closed up the flesh. He formed a Woman out of the rib and brought her to him.\u00a0 Then He said, at last, here is one of my kind-bone taken from my bone and flesh from my flesh.\u00a0 Woman is her name because she was taken out of Man.
\nFrom the passage above, the following are obvious;
\n1.God had an afterthought that Man needed a companion in the person of a woman
\n2.God was short of raw material after creating man and so He had to put man into a deep sleep in order to take a rib from him to make woman.
\n3.This time God created man before creating woman, suggesting that they were not created at the same time.
\nObviously, any unbiased reader would certainly say that the writers of the Bible are a bunch of confused human beings, and would conclude that the Bible is inconsistent and inaccurate.\u00a0 However, if such a person is privileged to know where the writers were coming from, he will bow in shame at his lack of knowledge, and would immediately recognize that they were not out of their minds.\u00a0 They gave to humanity accurate and very consistent spiritual accounts as best as they could, in view of the spiritual maturity of man at that time.\u00a0 The problem of accuracy and consistency seems to be prevalent because man wants to measure spiritual matters by intellectual standards.\u00a0 We must recognize that the Bible is a spiritual work and we can only understand its content with the intuitional brain, and not with the intellectual brain.
\nGod Put Man into a Deep Sleep (Genesis 2:18-23).
\nThe putting of man into a deep sleep as represented in the passage, does not refer to man on earth\u00a0 but speaks of a Divine and spiritual happening today, through the Grail Message \u201cIn the light of truth\u201d, we are permitted to know that the Divine Beings bear both positive and negative forms together, meaning they are neither male nor female.\u00a0 They radiate the living cross of Truth from within them as an expression of Unity \u2013 completeness.\u00a0 For this reason, they wear pinions expressing their lightness, in absolute loyalty to God the Father and selfless service, without a will of their own, but only swinging in the will of their Lord and King.\u00a0 This being the case, we cannot\u00a0 talk about, male and female beings in the Divine realm.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Apollos D. Dikibo<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And God said, let us make man in our own image,\u00a0 likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of sea and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. Introduction: The story of the Creation of Man […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-120385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=120385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120385\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=120385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=120385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=120385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}